Mr. Sean Peasgood reports

SPECTRA7 AND MULTILANE COLLABORATE ON 400GBPS PAM FOR NEXT GENERATION HYPER-SCALE DATA CENTER INTERCONNECTS

Spectra7 Microsystems Inc. and MultiLane Technologies Inc., a market leading manufacturer of high-speed production test equipment, have entered into a strategic collaboration on establishing test procedures, best practices and measurement criteria for production testing of active copper cables (ACC) for 400-gigabit data centre applications.

"Spectra7's new line of ACC products are set to fill a big need in the data centre interconnect market," said MultiLane chief executive officer Fadi Daou. "We are delighted to be working with Spectra7 as they anticipate transitioning their products to mass production in 2018."

The partnership with MultiLane began over a year ago when Spectra7 first demonstrated its GaugeChanger Plus QSFP-DD at DesignCon 2017 using MultiLane equipment. Since that time, the two companies have established a framework that will allow data centre operators, equipment OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and cable assembly companies to move the technology to the mass production phase.

"We're extremely excited to be working with MultiLane," said Spectra7 chief executive officer Raouf Halim. "They are the leader in high performance, cost-effective test solutions for the 100G to 400G interconnect market."

New applications like blockchain processing and cryptocurrency mining are accelerating the shift from traditional data centre design (access layer-aggregation layer-core layer) to spine and leaf mesh architectures that require many more high-speed interconnects. Simultaneously, new interface standards such as 400G PAM QSFP-DD, are dramatically increasing port density in data centre switching systems, but are also limiting the interconnect length that can be served by low-cost direct attach copper cables. Spectra7's GaugeChanger Plus silicon enables copper cables up to three times the reach of passive copper cables. These ACCs lower power consumption by approximately 80 per cent and are half the cost when compared with the other alternative active optical cables.

About Spectra7 Microsystems Inc.

Spectra7 Microsystems is a high performance analog semiconductor company delivering unprecedented bandwidth, speed and resolution to enable disruptive industrial design for leading electronics manufacturers in virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, data centres and other connectivity markets. Spectra7 is based in San Jose, Calif., with design centres in Markham, Ont., Cork, Ireland, and Little Rock, Ark.

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